For their health

Dennis Holland is in a race against time to finish work on Shawnee, a 72-foot wooden sailing vessel with peeling paint and rotting wood that has sat next to his Newport Beach home for the past three years.

He hopes to restore the vintage, 1916 ship before his neighbors, fed up with massive the boat that towers over their Newport Heights neighborhood, run him out of town. He’s also racing against the cancer that has metastasized in his bones.

“This boat has saved my life,” Holland said. “It gives me something to think about and do instead of watching TV. The boat has cancer, and so do I.”

Some of Holland’s neighbors, who have dubbed Shawnee “the arc,” want her gone.

“He’s a really nice guy, but I don’t think a neighborhood is the right place for a boat,” said Holland’s neighbor, Emily Richonne, who has lived in the neighborhood for the past 12 years.

The prow of the massive vessel nearly crashed through the Richonnes’ garage when Holland had it hauled to his house from Newport Harbor three years ago, she said.

The city of Newport Beach has been inundated with complaints from Holland’s neighbors about the lead paint and other toxic materials that people in the neighborhood might be exposed to while the boat is being restored, Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Sharon Wood said.

Neighbors also have complained about the massive size of Shawnee, and that the boat has sat next to Holland’s house for three years, Wood said.

“I think people respect his craftsmanship, but it’s in an inappropriate location,” said one of Holland’s neighbors, who did not want to be named. “This is not a dry-dock storage. It’s a complete nuisance.”

Holland checked with Newport Beach city staff before he moved Shawnee, who found nothing in city codes that would keep him from keeping the boat next to his home for up to two years, Wood said.

“City officials are discussing the situation with home owners and looking at what the city’s options are,” she said.

Holland fell in love with Shawnee, a 72-foot wooden ketch, when he was a kid, digging through trash cans in San Francisco.

He found a bunch of old sailing magazines, one had a picture of the old wooden ship. Shawnee sailed more than 3,500 miles of Pacific Ocean in 1925 from California to Tahiti in the first-ever Tahiti Race without any type of modern refrigeration or navigation equipment.

Holland still marveled over that fact as he stood in the stripped hull of the craft on Wednesday, which smells of water and old wood.

At age 8, Holland showed the magazine to his dad, who took him to see Shawnee, which happened to be docked in San Francisco at the time.

“Like an old girlfriend, I’ve always kept an eye on her from a distance,” Holland said.

Shawnee had been docked in Newport Harbor since 1954 when Holland convinced the family of the previous owner, who had died, to give him the boat to restore a few years ago.

The old wooden vessel was sinking, its wooden hull slowly rotting in the bay, when Holland got a Dutch ship transport company to haul the vessel to his home. Holland had to tear out one side of his garage to make room for Shawnee between his ranch-style home and the old two-story Sears, Roebuck and Co. barn he painstakingly rebuilt next to the house a few years back.

Holland’s 23-year-old-son, Dennis Holland Jr, grew up aboard the 118-foot schooner that his dad spent a decade restoring next to the house. The Pilgrim of Newport became a local landmark in Newport Beach, and passersby would visit the home to see Holland’s progress on the tall ship. Holland Jr. was 12 when his dad sold the vessel, which was renamed the Spirit of Dana Point. The vessel has since become an icon and tourist attraction in Orange County.

Now Holland Jr. is helping his dad restore Shawnee.

“It’s because of my dad you can actually go see history instead of just reading about it in a book,” he said.

Holland was diagnosed several years ago with prostate cancer, which has since spread to his bones in numerous places. His health has further deteriorated over the past few months — he blames it on the stress the conflict between his neighbors and the boat has caused him.

Holland claims moving Shawnee would cause the old, fragile vessel to crumble, and add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of restoring it. Just transporting the boat to a dry-dock facility would cost him about $14,000, Holland said.

“He’s really one of the last true craftsmen,” said Robert Krogh, Holland’s friend and former doctor, who is now retired. “This boat has really given him something to live for, which is an important thing for cancer patients to have.”